March 11 (Bloomberg) -- Oil fell below $100 a barrel in New
York for the first time in more than a week after Japan’s
strongest earthquake in at least a century forced refiners to
shut several processing plants.

U.S. crude futures were headed for their first weekly
decline in a month following the temblor in the world’s third-largest oil user. A fire at Cosmo Oil Co.’s refinery in Chiba,
outside Tokyo, is spreading, a Fire Department spokesman said.
JX Nippon Oil & Energy Corp. closed refineries in Sendai,
Kashima and Negishi. In London, Brent crude was set for its first
weekly decline in seven.

“The earthquake is having a psychological impact on the
market in triggering a rise in risk aversion,” said Carsten
Fritsch, an analyst at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt. “The effect
is also physical, in that oil demand from Japan could
temporarily be lower.”

Crude for April delivery tumbled as much as $3.69, or 3.6
percent, to $99.01 a barrel in electronic trading on the New
York Mercantile Exchange. It was at $100.38 at 1:02 p.m. London
time. Prices this week are down 3.9 percent, the first weekly
drop in a month.

Brent oil for April settlement on the London-based ICE
Futures Europe exchange dropped as much as $3.18, or 2.8
percent, to $112.25 a barrel. It was trading at $113.19 at 1:01
p.m. local time. The contract has lost 2.4 percent this week.

‘Day of Rage’

Anti-government demonstrators in Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s
largest producer, are advocating a “Day of Rage” today, and
police in anti-riot vehicles patrolled the capital, Riyadh. In
the kingdom’s Eastern Province, home to many of its minority
Shiite Muslims, three people were injured yesterday when
security forces broke up a protest in the city of Qatif, Major
General Mansour al-Turki, an Interior Ministry spokesman, said.

“There is a risk, yes. Is it big? I don’t think so,”
Christophe de Margerie, chief executive officer of Total SA,
said at a press conference in Paris today. “The world has
understood that it’s not in anyone’s interest that the Middle
East flares up.”

Crude exports from Libya, where oil facilities have been
targeted in a civil war, are “well below” 500,000 barrels a
day, according to the International Energy Agency. That
represents roughly a third of the oil the North African nation
produced on average in January and February, data compiled by
Bloomberg show. Shipments may have dropped to as little as
300,000 barrels a day, Al Arabiya television reported, citing
Shokri Ghanem, chairman of Libya’s state-run National Oil Corp.

Oil Stockpiles

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries said in
its monthly report today that there may be a “contra-seasonal”
drop in global oil stockpiles over the next three months as a
result of turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa.

Japan was struck by an 8.9-magnitude earthquake off the
northern coast near the city of Sendai at 2:46 p.m. local time.
The country was hit by 10 aftershocks, according to the U.S.
Geological Survey.

The temblor forced Cosmo Oil to shut its 220,000 barrel-a-day refinery in the city of Chiba after a fire started at the
facility’s storage tanks, said Yusuke Kanada, a company
spokesman. JX Nippon’s three plants that closed have a combined
processing capacity of about 600,000 barrels daily.

Japan consumed 4.42 million barrels a day of oil in 2010,
according to data from the IEA’s Feb. 10 Monthly Oil Market
Report. China used 9.39 million barrels and the U.S., 19.25
million, the agency said.

Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg News were split over the
direction of crude oil prices next week amid spreading unrest in
the Middle East and signs that the global economic rebound is
slowing.

Fifteen of 36 analysts, or 42 percent, forecast crude will
advance through March 18. Fifteen predicted futures will
decline. Six said there will be little change.